We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Samantha Luegger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk I have taken is jumping into brick & mortar 2022 with my business, LUE Outdoors: It was, and is, a huge investment that has benefits and drawbacks. We have experienced both, but due to the location (and zero retail space availability where we are), we are closing our brick & mortar doors. Was the risk worth it? Yes and No. It has been extremely expensive, stressful and exhausting, but we have met amazing people, gotten the word out about our website, and spread the news people can find us at events all summer long. It has been full of life lessons that I am going to use to continue the growth of LUE Outdoors.

Samantha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I live with multiple chronic health conditions, as well as mental illnesses… LUE Outdoors was born from my passion for the outdoors, and began as an Outdoor Industry Ambassador & Affiliate Business (2018) after I had to officially close my Property Management – Housekeeping – Remodel Business (2016) when my doctors informed me what I was doing for work was actually making my degenerative health conditions progress more quickly and that they would prefer I close my business, so I headed my doctors warning and request; I closed the business. Unfortunately, I then ran into another issue: I could not find employment due to my health (2016-2018) and my inability to promise I would be reliable (because of my health conditions). This is when I dreamed up LUE Outdoors.

A Dream Became Reality
LUE Outdoors has grown to be an Outdoors Industry Retailer Online, as well, a temporary Brick & Mortar Store in Silverthorne, Colorado. And, I am still an Ambassador and Affiliate in the Outdoors Industry.

LUE Outdoors is
Woman Owned
Disability Owned
LGBTQ+ Owned

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

There have been a few pivots over the course of my entrepreneurial years, but we are currently pivoting: With closing the brick & mortar, we are going to start doing markets, festivals, events and private pop-up parties.
“We bring the Outdoor Industry to you.”

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We are just getting into manufacturing our own products. So far, we are going to do collaborations with businesses we have relationships with through LUE Outdoors. These are businesses we have confidence in and their product(s), so it was an easy choice to work with them. I will acknowledge not everyone has this, which will make their journey a little more difficult, but for most, it is absolutely worth the time and effort to find and build connections.

We do have a product we are going to do on our own. This product may have some challenges purely because of regulations. I have faith, though, that our relationships will help us with this endeavor. If not, we will look to industry assistance. It is going to take research and lots of hard work, and it may not work out, but if we don’t take the leap, we will never know if we/the product could have been successful. I think that thought process is important for people that are considering bringing their ideas to fruition.

Contact Info:

• Website: lueoutdoors.com
• Instagram: lueoutdoors
• Facebook: lueoutdoors

Image Credits
I took all of the photos